Former famine victim says she 'was lucky'

MEKELE, ETHIOPIA — She was famine's poster child--a 3-year-old Ethiopian girl snatched from death and gazing at the world through exhausted eyes, her emaciated body wrapped in a white burial shroud.

In 1984, Birhan Weldu's face haunted the Band Aid rock concert for hunger relief. Today, she is a healthy college student who represents the success of the relief effort and the world's failure to deal with the root causes of famine.

The Ethiopian government is soon expected to appeal for food aid for 12 million people. Last year, 14 million would have starved without Western handouts.

"I was lucky," says Birhan, whose mother starved to death. "Sometimes I can't believe I survived, because hundreds of thousands of children like me lost their lives."

One million Ethiopians died from the 1984 drought. Millions of them still depend on food aid every year, with some years worse than others because of cyclical droughts.

Birhan is 23 now and training at an agricultural college. Though grateful for the aid that helped save her life, Birhan hopes she'll see the day it's no longer needed.

"We need to stand on our own," she says, "and not always be reliant on aid.